


Finding Forever:  Deleted Scene

by carolinenite



Series: Finding Forever [2]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Deleted Scene, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 22:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14223621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinenite/pseuds/carolinenite
Summary: A deleted scene from Finding Forever





	Finding Forever:  Deleted Scene

**Author's Note:**

> This scene was supposed to go after Chapter 2 and before the town meeting, but I couldn’t find an appropriately alternating ‘flash-back’ to complement it. So, it went in the ashcan. But, I’m feeling a little precious about it, and I like the way that this plays in my head. And now, you get it, and you can make your own judgments about it, but at least it’s off my desktop and can hopefully stop haunting me.

The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth as Mackenzie switched off the last light in the kitchen and made her way to the living room.  The single lamp burning in the room, in concert with the blaze of the fire, cast friendly shadows around the room, and she watched them dance as she eased into a rocker that she had salvaged from one of the old inns years ago.  She shut her eyes, allowing the comfortable silence of her home to wash over her.  Without intention, she found herself rocking gently, keeping a steady rhythm as she moved.

Mackenzie’s carefully ordered world teetered on the precipice of changes, changes of which she had ceased to dream long ago.  She had planned her life with precision since Will had left-- the café and the newspaper kept her professionally satisfied; the town was a tightknit family upon which she could always depend, and they needed her particular brand of passion to help the town move forward.  She was never truly alone in this town; there was always someone to visit, always something to see or do.  And now, with a ferocity that shouldn’t have surprised her, Will had returned and threatened to up-end her life.  Mackenzie opened her eyes and focused on the flames, offering her mind a peaceful escape from its tumultuous path. 

She was, after a few minutes, vaguely aware of the sound of a car in the drive.  The closing of a car door and steps on her walkway brought her out of her chair, and she moved toward the door.  She flipped the deadbolt and opened the door to find Will, hand raised to knock.  His eyebrows climbed, and he offered her a quizzical expression. 

“I heard your car.”

“Ah.”  He glanced inside to the dimly lit room.  “Expecting someone, Mac?” 

His tone was light, but Mackenzie recognized the tension in his expression.  It had never occurred to him that she might have company tonight, and he was clearly preparing a hasty retreat.

“Just enjoying a fire and a quiet night in.”  She opened the door and swept her arm through the space between them.  “Care to join me?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he crossed the threshold and settled into to chair that had become his standard when visiting Mackenzie. 

Mackenzie watched his face, clearly reading the battle raging internally while he searched for a more eloquent acceptance of her invitation.  She returned to the rocking chair and quickly lost herself in the flames again.  The silence stretched between them, both companionable and heavy, and minutes passed before Mackenzie spoke.

“What brought you by tonight?”

“Imagine my surprise,” he began, reaching into the coat that he had laid over the arm of the chair, “when I was at the market today and found a cookbook, authored by you.  I had no idea you were published.”

A blush crept across Mackenzie’s cheeks, and she smiled.

“We put that together years ago when The Main was just starting out.  It brought the locals back more often, oddly enough.  People liked having the recipes, but it’s too damn much work to do it at home.  Far easier for me to make and bake for them.”  She reached for the book and flipped through it.  “These recipes became something of a cult favorite with some of the regular out-of-town visitors.  I had no idea these were still on the shelf anywhere in town.”

“Care to autograph it for me, Mac?”  A seductive edge slid into Will’s voice, and Mac’s eyes grew wide as her gaze jumped from the book to Will.  “I’m impressed, honey, truly.”

“Thank you.  I’m proud of it.”  She kept her tone level, tried to diffuse the tension that he was injecting into his tone.

“Did you have a hard time finding a publisher willing to do a small run?”

“Actually,” she bit her lip and gave a coy smile before continuing, “it had a national release.  The publisher was doing a series of local cookbooks she felt deserved a wider exposure.  The profits kept our doors open after a kitchen fire that would have bankrupted us.

“Wow, Mac.”  His tone betrayed unmasked admiration.  “You’ve really done well for yourself.  Haven’t you?”

“It was that or go under.  I didn’t have a lot of support those first years.”  Her tone was sharper than she intended, and she regretted the words as soon as they crossed her lips.  The light from the fireplace flickered, briefly illuminating his face.  In the moment of visual clarity, she could read the hurt and regret etched there.  “I’m sorry, Billy.  That came out wrong.”

“It’s fair, though.  How much easier would it have been to have someone… to have me here, lockstep with you, while you built all of this?”  He shook his head.  “I’m sorry.”  Mac stood.

“How about a drink?”  He nodded, and she turned toward the kitchen.  As she passed the chair in which he was seated, she laid her hand on his shoulder.  “I did alright, Will.  I didn’t _need_ support.  It might have saved me a grey hair or two, but I did alright on my own.”

When she returned, it was with two glasses of wine.  As she passed him a glass, his arm caught her around the waist.

“Sit with me?”  He needed the closeness of her, the reassurance of her proximity to him.  Every time he felt like he was making progress in breaking down her walls, he invariably unearthed another event that he should never have missed.  Every single day was a miss, and he knew it, but she had done so much.  And he had missed it.  He heard her sigh and felt her acquiesce.  She slid over the arm of the chair into his lap.  “You’ve always fit just right here, Mac.”

It took only a minute before she was relaxed against him, settled snugly against him, just as her heart remembered.  They sat together, sipping their wine.  Will’s thumb traced idle circles on Mackenzie’s arm, and she allowed her head to relax against his cheek.

“I thought I saw you once, about five years ago,” she said, voice deep with contentment.  “I was strolling across the Golden Gate Bridge.  I looked down, and for a moment, I saw you standing at a railing, staring off into the bay.”  She gave a husky chuckle.

“It was July, and the blue dress you were wearing didn’t have sleeves.  You keep rubbing your arms, trying to fight the breeze, but your smile was bright enough that I could see it all the way down in the park.”

Mackenzie sat up.

“It was you?”  He nodded.  “It was you.”

“Yeah.”

“I wondered for the rest of the trip.  I kept my eyes open, and I wondered.”

His arms tightened around her, and he brought her back to his chest.

“I always hoped that you had seen me that day.  The park was my last stop before the airport, and I stayed so long that I almost missed my flight.”

“Why did you stay?”

“In case you were coming down.”  The longing in his voice broke Mackenzie’s heart.

“If only I’d realized.  I thought my subconscious was crossing over.  You were on my mind during that whole trip.  We had talked about it for ages, and I finally decided just to go.”  She trailed her fingers up and down his arm.

“I did something similar.”  He took a long sip of his wine.  “Who’d you go with?”

“No one,” Mackenzie answered, simply.  “It wasn’t a trip that belonged to anyone else.”

“It’s a lot of missed fucking years.”  He dragged his free hand through his hair, overcome again by the enormity of their missed life together.  As soon as he spoke, he felt all of the tension return to Mackenzie, and she climbed out of his lap, moving to stand in front of the fire.

“You think I’m unaware?”  She spoke with her back to him.  “It’s seventeen years, Will.  I wasn’t sitting on the couch waiting for you.  I lived, and loved, and built, and played.  I was fine.  Fuck, I was happy.  Until you came back, and now, it’s all up in the air.”  She turned, staring at the man who had haunted her for her entire adult life.  “It’s just not going to work.  Is it, Billy?  There’s just too much water under the bridge.”  She wrapped her arms around herself, a physical representation of the emotional barrier that she was reassembling.

“I never thought, not for one minute, that you were waiting for me, Mac.”  He stood but didn’t cross the room.  “I followed your career from afar, but I didn’t let myself dive too deeply.  Christ, I even put a moratorium on Charlie related to talking about you.  But the minute that I found out that you’d never married, I started making arrangements.  I sold the business, the house, all of it, and I moved here, determined to win you back.”  He closed on her, pulling her close, needing her as near to him as possible.  She remained tense and unyielding.  “I get that this came out of the blue and that it’s happening really quickly for you.  I know there’s a long road that we didn’t travel together, but that doesn’t change that I’m here now and that I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“And what happens when my birth certificate still says the same thing that it used to say?  Or you have a health scare of some description?  What then, Will?”

He took some comfort in the fact that she was still locked in his arms, held tight against him, even though the tension remained.

“It took me a lot of years to realize that I was a fool, Mackenzie.  You know that you were right from the beginning.  Do you really need to hear me say it?”

Mackenzie flattened her palms against Will’s chest and shoved herself out of his embrace.

“You know what, you stubborn ass?  Yes.  Yes, I do need to hear you say it.  You expect me to fall into your arms, to melt into you, and to pretend that you were never gone.  But, you were gone, Will.  You just were, and I’m not sure how that stops affecting me.”

They stood, squared off, staring at each other for long enough that Mackenzie began to wonder if Will had heard her at all.

“Well, Mac, I guess I’m going to have to keep telling you, keep showing you until you believe it.  I’m not going anywhere.  I’m in this for the long haul.”  His words were measured, and she could tell that he was fighting back strong emotion.  “I meant what I said.  I’m here to win you back.  I’ve never stopped loving you, and, eventually, you’ll trust that again.”  He leaned toward her and pressed a light kiss to her cheek.  “You will, and until then, I’ll be here.”

With a final sad smile, Will retrieved his coat and let himself out of the front door, leaving Mackenzie standing in front of the fire.  When she eventually turned away from the fireplace, she saw that Will had left the cookbook on her coffee table, and she smiled just a little.  It was just like him to leave a physical tie, something that she would feel the need to return to him, just as an insurance policy to set up their next meeting.

She retrieved a marker from the kitchen and inscribed the book, “To Will, may your coffee be just how you like it. –M. McHale”.  As an afterthought, she pressed a kiss to the page, leaving a print of her lipstick.  She smiled and traced over the inscription with her index finger.

“I’ve never stopped either.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts.


End file.
